THE QUESTION of media intrusion has surfaced with the publication of photos in a women's magazine of one of the children of Dan and Honor Carter, pictured with his parents in a public place.
It is a grey area. Overseas, in Britain and America, paparazzi photographs of the children of celebrities are commonplace. It's standard practice that if a famous film star emerges from their house with child in tow, everything will get photographed. The child's hairstyle, clothes, and anything that touches on the cuteness factor will be captured and commented on editorially.
I would be happy to think that New Zealand hasn't reached this kind of focus, and hopefully we won't, as it's not particularly in our culture to start gushing about famous people. The Press Council, the watchdog that oversees print media complaints, has a basic principle: if we publish photos of children or young people, editors must demonstrate an exceptional degree of public interest to override the interests of the child or young person.
Common sense should prevail if the public interest isn't paramount. During Wings over Wairarapa, film director and aircraft enthusiast James Cameron called into Hood Aerodrome to have a look around. Our photographer introduced himself and asked about pictures. Mr Cameron was fine about it, as long as his children didn't appear in the shots. Context was everything in this instance. We wanted photos of Mr Cameron chilling out with pilots and planes and he was cool with that. Everyone wins.
Nonetheless, it is entirely possible, perhaps even reasonable, to take a photograph of a family, in a family-day-out kind of situation, in a public place, because that is in context. In most instances, when we photograph people at events, like BrewDay or Wings, we check with the people to get names, including children, and in the rare instance they don't want to be in the paper, that's fine, there's plenty that do.
